


Old Ghosts

by MirrorMystic



Series: Among Eagles [14]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, F/F, Gen, Lesbians in Space, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-08-12 02:58:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20135758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: The crew of the Sparrow leave the Kaleidoscope and its secrets behind, with the light of Tir Tairngire’s sun fading until it’s just another star in the sky. With a new, sunny, if eccentric companion aboard, things seem to be looking up-- until they receive a distress call from the depths of uncharted space.On frontier planet A-117B, the team trades the garish color and painted smiles of the Kaleidoscope for buried memories and eyes in the dark. As Aabha leads the team underground, a lonely light in the haunted dark, two things become clear: the past doesn’t stay in the past. And the future is anything but certain...





	1. The Descent

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back to Among Eagles! I've been struggling to get this up for long enough that I caved and decided to split it into chunks. So please enjoy part one of Order asset Sparrow's newest adventure! I hope you all enjoy the read! ^^

~*~  
  
“Alright,” Lila whispered. “Everything’s set. Ohhh, this is gonna be the one!”  
  
“Hey hey hey, don’t jinx it,” Vincent shushed. “Chief?”  
  
Shanti turned to the duo a finger to her lips for quiet. Then she held up her hand and counted down on her fingers: three, two, one--  
  
Click! A ball bearing dropped out of a cylinder and landed on a molded plastic track with a thunk. It rolled down a spiraling slide and thumped against a target at the end. A little wooden block fell over, knocking over a domino-line of empty pistol magazines. The last mag in line fell between two wires and completed a circuit, flipping a switch. A mechanical vice clicked open and dropped a power cell onto a tiny trolley made of a block of wood and some miniature wheels. Gravity took the trolley down another winding course, slowly building up speed until it hit a metal partition at the end of the track. The power cell fell forward into an inert drone, slotting neatly into place. Shanti’s service drone blinked to life with a flicker of yellow light, automatically rising to her eye-level. Along the way, it bumped into Kit’s heat blade, held tight in another mechanical vice, and clicked the activation stud on its hilt. A red hot glow spread down the length of the sword, lighting the half-dozen fuses laid out across the blade. The fuses burned down, until--  
  
Six fireworks shot up into the Sparrow’s cargo bay atrium and exploded into light and color.   
  
“Yeah!” Lila, Vincent, and even Shanti jumped up and cheered. They whooped and grinned, trading high fives all around.   
  
“What on earth are you doing in here?”  
  
Jaki appeared on the cargo bay balcony, waving firework smoke out of his face. Lila grinned, and gave him a wave.   
  
“Hey, Father!” Lila beamed, bouncing on her heels. “We made a Rube Goldberg machine!”  
  
“And set off some fireworks I’ve still got from Paradiso,” Vincent added, sheepish.  
  
“I see,” Jaki teased, as he descended the steps into the cargo bay. “So _you’re_ the ones making all this racket.”  
  
_Doesn’t bother me_, Shanti signed, smirking. Jaki just shook his head.   
  
“What, are you going on a picnic?” Lila wondered.   
  
Jaki hefted the box in his arms, filled with what seemed like the entirety of the Sparrow’s pantry.   
  
“Not quite,” Jaki smiled. “I was just thinking of bringing everyone some refreshment. And I thought you three should have first pick, since you’re all working _so_ hard.”  
  
“Well!” Vincent grinned. “Don’t mind if I do… Oh! Check it out, Lila, they’ve got apple juice.”  
  
“Fuck off,” LIla teased.   
  
Vincent made a show of picking out his favorite beer. He plucked it out of the box, cracked it open with a hiss, and took a long sip--  
  
~*~  
  
Robyn thumped her beer onto the table and let out a satisfied sigh. She raised her arms above her head and stretched, before settling down into the plush booth seating of the Sparrow’s lounge. Across the table, Yuna flashed her a sweet smile, and Robyn grinned, warmth settling into her core and tugging drowsily at her eyelids as she nursed her beer.   
  
“Now, tell me how it works,” Ambrosia was insisting, eagerly leaning forward in her seat. Unlike Robyn, she was clearly, relentlessly awake. “Is there an incantation involved, is it some kind of spell…?”  
  
“There are no words involved,” Yuna laughed, her hands primly folded in her lap. “I just sort of… think it, and it happens. Sure, there were times, especially when I was younger, when I didn’t quite have the hang of things and I’d have to spend all day half-shifted. But that was, oh, ages ago. Here, would you like me to demonstrate?”  
  
“Oh, yes, please!” Ambrosia tittered.   
  
Yuna smiled. She offered her hand, and slowly let out a breath.   
  
Pale blue light glinted at her fingertips and spread up her forearm up to her elbow. A moment later, her fingernails shifted into hooked claws, her flesh transfiguring into frost white scales.   
  
Ambrosia gasped, a hand over her mouth. She nudged her glasses up her nose, blinking. Normally, her unglamoured, multicolored eyes could be a little unsettling, with her glasses making them seem extra bulging and insectile. But there was a certain charm to her now, leaning on the edge of her seat, her eyes glinting with awe and wonder.   
  
“That. Is. Amazing,” Ambrosia breathed. She took Yuna’s shifted hand in hers, squeezing her palm, brushing her fingers against her scales. “It’s not nearly as rough as I would have imagined. You’re so soft… but I can also feel the muscle beneath. You’re so _strong_, Miss Yuna.”  
  
“Oh, stop,” Yuna teased, bashful.   
  
“So you’re saying you can selectively transform parts of yourself? It’s not an all-or-nothing thing?” Ambrosia wondered.   
  
“Yes, yes,” Yuna nodded. Her arm shifted back in a glimmer of blue light, but Ambrosia didn’t seem eager to let her go. “Why, every night, I let my tail out so the Captain here can cuddle--”  
  
Robyn choked on her drink. She sat up, coughing, blearily pointing a finger at Ambrosia.   
  
“...I’ve never done that,” Robyn insisted.   
  
Ambrosia held her hands up, sporting a scandalous grin. “Well! I’m not one to judge!”  
  
Robyn sighed and sank into her seat just as Jaki came up the spinal corridor and poked his head into the lounge.   
  
“Hello, ladies,” he said warmly.   
  
“Hello, Father,” Yuna smiled.   
  
“Perfect timing,” Robyn said, wiggling her can. “I was running out.”  
  
“I didn’t miss anything too exciting, I hope,” Jaki said.   
  
“Nah,” Robyn shrugged, rummaging through Jaki’s box of refreshments and emerging with a fresh beer. “I’m just sitting here, mildly tipsy, watching my girlfriend get handsy with the new girl.”  
  
Ambrosia yelped and raised her hands as if she were being held at gunpoint. “Goodness me! My hands didn’t mean anything _untoward_, I assure you.”  
  
“She’s joking,” Yuna reassured. She gave Robyn a wave. “Put a ring on it, Captain!”  
  
“Don’t tempt me, sweetpea,” Robyn teased.   
  
“Hold a moment, Captain,” Jaki chuckled. “If you’re here, and Yuna’s here, then who’s flying this ship?”  
  
“Crane,” Robyn deadpanned. “She doesn’t want me on the bridge if I’m not one hundred percent sober, for _some_ reason.”  
  
“I can hardly imagine why.”  
  
“We’re in space! I’m not gonna hit anything!” Robyn insisted. She cracked open her beer with a hiss. “...Maybe if I get tipsy enough she’ll let me take a nap.”  
  
“I was just about to go see if the girls would care for some refreshment,” Jaki said. “Have you seen them? Do you know what they’re up to?”  
  
“They’re in their room,” Robyn smirked. “What do _you_ think?”  
  
~*~  
  
A single bead of sweat traced a meandering path down Lily’s face and dripped off her nose. She took a deep breath, and let out a shuddering sigh, drowsily tightening her hold around Aabha’s waist. In front of her, Kit snaked an arm up over Aabha’s shoulder and cupped Lily’s cheek, gently tipping her chin up to the light.   
  
“...Holy shit,” Kit teased. “You’re melting.”  
  
“Shut up,” Lily grumbled. “It’s only ‘cuz I’m laying here with two space heaters.”  
  
“Fire mage,” Aabha said primly.   
  
“Alright, well what’s _your_ excuse?” Lily said, shoving Kit in the arm.   
  
“Hey man, I’m a shapeshifter. My blood runs hot,” Kit shrugged.   
  
Aabha smiled and pulled Kit into her arms, arching her back into Lily’s embrace. She sighed, content.   
  
“...What’s gotten you two so clingy, anyhow?” Aabha murmured into Kit’s throat.  
  
“I dunno,” Kit said lightly. “Maybe it’s the fact that a week ago a boarding tube exploded and you almost got blasted right out into space?”  
  
“Yeah, that’ll do it,” Lily shrugged.   
  
Aabha nodded, somber. “Well, in fairness, venting the tube to space wasn’t really my plan.”  
  
“It was Ambrosia’s,” Lily said. She frowned. “...Still not sure how I feel about that.”  
  
Aabha cooed in sympathy. She found Lily’s hand around her waist, took it, and gave her a squeeze.   
  
“Hey,” Aabha said gently. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”  
  
“I dunno,” Kit muttered. “Maybe we should, I dunno. Dial it back on the thrilling heroics.”  
  
“What, like sprinting after Adrian Chase’s car in fox form? Or walking unarmed into a corporate skytower and negotiating with crime lords?” Aabha smiled, pulling her girls closer. “I’m sorry for the scare. Listen, if it helps, _I_ wasn’t too worried.”  
  
“Really?” Lily teased. “‘Cuz explosive decompression is no joke.”  
  
“Really,” Aabha smiled. “Because I knew you two were right there with me.”  
  
Aabha captured Kit’s lips in a soft, lingering kiss, before looking over her shoulder and giving Lily one of her own. Aabha watched fondly as Kit and Lily leaned in above her and took their turn to kiss, only for Kit to complain about Lily being sweaty and Lily to thump her on the head. Aabha laughed and curled into them, cradled in warmth and light.   
  
The Sparrow’s shipboard PA crackled above them.   
  
_“Agent Puri?”_  
  
Aabha squirmed, wriggling an arm out from under Kit and snatching her comm off her nightstand.   
  
“Go ahead, Crane,” she said.   
  
_“I have an urgent holocall waiting for you. I’m patching you through now.”__  
__  
_“Now? Oh-- No, wait--”  
  
The holoprojector shimmered to life. Two luminescent figures took shape before her, as Aabha pulled herself out of the warm tangle of limbs and hurriedly smoothed down the front of her blouse.   
  
_“Agent Puri,”_ two voices crackled over the link.   
  
“Hide the booze!” Lily called.   
  
“Put some pants on!” Kit cut in.   
  
Aabha swatted them away. She stood up straight, and cleared her throat.   
  
“Hello, Commander,” Aabha said, bowing her head. Her cheeks were warm. “...Hello, Director.”  
  
Kit and Lily straightened up immediately. Commander Cassandra Vega, for her part, was trying with all her might to fight down a snicker. Director Soren Kamuro, meanwhile, merely raised an eyebrow.   
  
_“...Is this a bad time, Agent Puri?”_ he wondered.   
  
Cassie snorted, and clapped a hand over her mouth. She cleared her throat, and straightened up, a smile tugging at her lips.   
  
_“Gather your team, Agent Puri,”_ Cassie said. _“Duty calls...”_  
  
~*~  
  
_“A-117B,”_ Cassie began, her luminous form pacing above the control room holoterminal, the crew fully assembled around her. _“A frontier planet, newly discovered. Six weeks ago, the Pathfinder Survey Corps, an independent pioneer group, deployed to A-117B in order to assess its habitability. Based on their findings, any necessary terraforming procedures could be ordered and bidding could begin on settlement rights.”_  
  
“Who’d want to live on this mudball?” Kit scoffed, poking at the display. A-117B floated above the holoterminal, a murky brown blob of a planet. “This whole planet looks like nothing but swamps and fog.”  
  
_“Or worse,”_ Soren said grimly._ “A week ago, Pathfinder HQ lost contact with the survey team sent to A-117B. Thinking the lack of communication could be due to mechanical failure or weather interference, Pathfinder HQ spent three more days attempting to reestablish contact. On the fourth day, the survey team was officially declared missing.”_  
  
“They found something?” Lily wondered.   
  
“Or something found them,” Jaki mused.   
  
“The Pathfinders are a private company,” Aabha said. “How did this come to the Order’s attention?”  
  
_“Last night, Order Intelligence detected a massive spike in psionic energy originating from A-117B,”_ Soren said. _“Its source? The coordinates of the Pathfinder survey team’s last known location, confirmed by Pathfinder HQ themselves.”_  
  
“Shit,” Crane muttered. Shanti sucked her teeth.   
  
“Is this a Breach?” Aabha asked.   
  
_“We don’t know yet. Not for sure,”_ Cassie said. _“Which is why we need eyes on the ground. Agent Puri, your team is the closest Order asset we have in the area, and time is of the essence. I am ordering Order asset Sparrow to investigate A-117B. Find the Pathfinder survey team, and get them out. If there is a Breach, do what you can to contain it.”_  
  
“And if we can’t contain it?” Aabha wondered.   
  
_“Then you get your team to safety, call in the fleet, and we’ll burn that place to the ground.”_  
  
“Hopefully it won’t come to that…” Aabha sighed.   
  
“Getting in might be a problem,” Robyn cut in. “I don’t know if you know this, but the Sparrow doesn’t take kindly to flying headfirst into distortion fields. It was hell trying to fly through the one on Calcian. The one before that, when we ran into that derelict Blood Pact ship? That one forced us out of hyperspace and stopped us right in our tracks.”  
  
“I may be able to create a barrier to ease our way,” Jaki offered. “I cannot shield the entire ship, but I can certainly shroud a single Remora. Of course, a Remora can hold only so many people…”  
  
_“Choose your team wisely, Agent Puri,”_ Cassie said. _“You don’t know what you may find down there. You will need to be ready for anything.”__  
_  
“Right…” Aabha blew out a breath, and clapped her hands. “Okay. Father Amaro? We need some occult expertise and we may have wounded waiting for us, so for this mission I want you front and center.”  
  
“Understood,” Jaki said.   
  
“Chief Bryant,” Aabha continued, “if there’s a chance the survey team’s lack of communication was due to a mechanical failure, or if they’re stranded on the planet and need to make repairs, I need you to be ready to bail them out.”  
  
_Will do_, Shanti signed.   
  
“Kit? Lily?” Aabha reached out to where her girls were right beside her, right where they belonged. She took their hands with a reassuring squeeze. “...Well. Do I even need to say it?”  
  
Cassie dipped her head, a proud smile creasing her lips.   
  
_“You’ve come so far, Aabha,”_ she murmured. _“And you’ll go even further.”_  
  
“Thank you, ma’am,” Aabha nodded.   
  
_“Good luck, Agent Puri,”_ Soren said. _“Be safe.”_  
  
“No promises,” Kit smirked. Lily thumped her in the arm.   
  
“Alright!” Aabha called out, confidence building in her chest. “Captain, I need you and Yuna to set a course for A-117B, and I need an estimated time of arrival. Lila, Agent Crane, as soon as this briefing is over the control room is yours while we’re deployed. Vince, get Strike One ready to launch. Everyone else, get dressed and get ready! Let’s move out!”  
  
~*~  
  
A mile-long bolt of lightning speared across A-117B’s night sky, the herald of warp translation. The Sparrow shot into being a moment later, wreathed in frost and shimmering azure lightning. It fell like a comet into the frontier planet’s upper atmosphere, the weather-beaten freighter engulfed in dazzling golden flame.  
  
Aabha emerged from her own brilliant pillar of saffron fire, her magic bleeding into the normal blue flash of teleport flare. She stepped out of the flames, wreathed in crimson and gold, her chakrams slung low against her hips. Kit’s jacket, scarf and shoulder-slung swords materialized in a flare of golden light and whistling wind; beside her, Lily belted her trenchcoat and tightened her gloves, stepping out of a teleport flare tinged a pale, frosty blue.   
  
There was a dense metallic clunk above them. Vincent threw a lever on his control console, and one of the Sparrow’s Remora-class anti-gravity skimmers descended from its holding rack on the ceiling. The sleek dart of a hovercraft opened up, articulated armored plates sliding back and unfurling like flower petals made of chrome. From his perch on the balcony above, Vincent flashed Aabha a thumbs up. She nodded, and gave one back.   
  
_“Strike One,”_ Yuna’s gentle voice drifted in over the ship’s intercom, _“board your craft and prepare to launch.”__  
_  
Yuna’s usual serene tone did little to dispel Aabha’s pre-mission jitters. She sucked in a breath, and blew it out in an anxious sigh.   
  
“Did we forget anything?” Jaki wondered, lingering beside the Remora’s open chassis.   
  
Out of the corner of her eye, Aabha saw Lily raise her hand. Kit high-fived her with so much gusto she almost knocked her over, the two of them grinning all the while.   
  
Aabha smiled. “No. I have everything I need.”  
  
Aabha felt something against her elbow. She turned, and saw Shanti, with her backpack full of drones plugged in to charge and her long rifle like a yoke across her shoulders.   
  
_Ready?_ She signed.   
  
_Always,_ Aabha returned.  
  
They hoisted themselves into the skimmer, Aabha taking the lead. She flicked a switch, and the Remora’s armored panels slid shut around them. The interior feed, linked to multiple exterior cameras, projected their surroundings on the inside of the skimmer’s walls and ceiling-- all the view of driving with the top down, from within the safety of an armored hull.  
  
_“Sparrow to away team,”_ Crane called._ “All signs, check in.”_  
  
“Firefly, ready,” Aabha responded.   
  
“Fox, ready.” Kit.   
  
“Wolf, ready.” Lily.   
  
“Since when have you been ‘Wolf’? That’s fucking rad,” Kit mused.   
  
_Chatter,_ Shanti chided. Lily grinned and punched Kit in the arm.   
  
“Jackal, ready,” Jaki reported.   
  
_Vulture, ready_, Shanti typed.   
  
_“Five minutes to target,”_ Robyn reported. _“Hang on to something, guys. We’re entering the distortion field-- it’s about to get bumpy.”_  
  
Right on cue, the miasma of Malefic energy spreading from their target site smacked into the Sparrow like a storm cloud. Howling winds buffeted the hull and sent the Sparrow juddering and rattling in its frame, smashed and shoved by turbulence.   
  
_“Three minutes to target,”_ Yuna called. _“Strike One, prepare for vertical launch.”_  
  
“Aye, Sparrow,” Aabha said. “Vince, take us down!”   
  
Vincent threw a lever on his console, and the floor of the Sparrow’s cargo bay opened up into giant retractable launch shutters. The Remora slid down through the Sparrow’s open hull until it was hanging, suspended from the Sparrow’s belly by an array of magnetic docking clamps. It was from this launch position that the skimmer earned its namesake-- a smaller, shorter-range craft clinging to the underside of a larger beast until the time came for it to strike out on its own.  
  
“Strike One, stand by for vertical launch!” Vincent cried into the roaring wind.   
  
“Launch!” Aabha commanded.   
  
“Launching!”  
  
There was a heavy metallic thunk, and the magnetic clamps pulled away. Strike One fell through the air, dropping like a stone. A-117B’s shadowed forests and murky swamps raced up to greet them.   
  
Aabha flicked a switch and yanked back on the wheel.   
  
The Remora’s engines lit in a halo of azure flame. The skimmer paused two feet above the surface of the water. Its engines roared, shooting up a cascade of water, before it shot forward like a bullet. Strike One tore through the swamp, anti-gravity drive shining, engines blazing, trailing a plume of foamy water like the tail of a comet.   
  
Strike One cruised through the swamps of A-117B, shadowed trees whipping past their interior screens. In the backseat, Jaki pressed his palms together and whispered something into his cupped hands. A soothing violet flame, so dark it was almost black, spread from his fingertips and gently engulfed the skimmer, as if shrouding the hovercraft in a curtain of black velvet.   
  
Jaki’s invocation of safe passage lingered heavy in the air, as palpable as a heavy cloak draped across one’s shoulders. One side effect of the spell seemed to mute the sound of the skimmer itself, reducing its thrumming engines to a faint, muffled hum. Aabha found herself subconsciously holding her breath in the tense, unsettling quiet.   
  
“Look at this place,” Kit mused, watching the swamp zip by. “Untouched by human hands…”  
  
“Must be nice to live somewhere you can actually see the stars,” Lily said.   
  
“Except we _can’t_ see the stars,” Kit retorted. “We can’t see _anything_, it’s so dark out. Our headlights ain’t shit.”  
  
“I know…” Aabha nibbled her lip, worried. She glanced over her shoulder. “Chief? How do things look on the infrared?”  
  
Behind her, at a navigator’s console wedged between the second and third rows of seats, Shanti was following the group’s progress on a map synced to the Sparrow’s control room. Strike One was a little bubble of gold amid a vast expanse of greens and blues.   
  
An ominous wave of static flickered across the console, distorting the display. Above them, their exterior feed began swimming with dead pixels and blurts of gray static.   
  
_We’re losing exterior visuals,_ Shanti warned. _Heavy distortion, all channels._   
  
“Father?” Aabha asked, with an anxious edge.   
  
“I am shielding us from the worst of the distortion field’s effects,” Jaki said, gritting his teeth. “But my invocation, it seems, isn’t quite as effective on machinery. The warp is breaking through.”  
  
“I’m opening us up,” Aabha said, tapping at her console. “Switching to manual control.”  
  
The Remora’s articulated armor slid open, whirring into a storage rack in the back of the open-topped skimmer. Aabha eased the skimmer down from its breakneck pace, slowing them to a much more cautious advance.   
  
The distortion was gnawing at their equipment and the skimmer could break down at a moment’s notice. If it did, better that it break down without leaving them trapped inside a metal coffin, or sending them careening into a tree after their autopilot glitches out.   
  
The darkness around them was overwhelming. It was shockingly dark; almost, Aabha dared to say, “impossibly” dark. The Remora’s searchlights failed to penetrate the darkness; they seemed smothered somehow, swallowed up by the shadowed trees. No matter how bright they shone, they never got much further than twenty, maybe thirty feet in front of them.   
  
Shanti’s navigational feed, awash with static, finally cut out entirely. She clicked her teeth in disdain.  
  
_We lost thermal scopes_, she reported with a sigh.  
  
Lily frowned, nervously scanning the trees. She sat forward, anxiously drumming her fingers against the strap on her thigh holster.   
  
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Lily murmured. She felt a hand against hers, looked up, and caught Kit’s eyes. Kit flashed her a grin. Lily couldn’t help but smile back.   
  
Kit bolted upright with a gasp.   
  
_Sit down_, Shanti signed.   
  
“I saw something,” Kit insisted. She braced herself on the back of Aabha’s seat, peering out into the darkness. “There’s someone out there.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Aabha asked.   
  
“C’mon, babe,” Kit teased. “I’m a fox, remember? I’ve got eyes better than any camera’s, and a better nose, too. I can see them. And I can smell them. They smell like…”  
  
“Sorcery?” Aabha hissed.   
  
“I was gonna say ‘like shit’, but sure, that works, too.”  
  
Aabha frowned. After Cyrus on Hypnos, and then Maxwell on Calcian, Aabha was hardly looking forward to another close encounter with a sorcerer. Especially not on a planet that was supposed to be uninhabited…  
  
Aabha felt it, then; that twinge in the back of her mind. That unholy resonance between the fire magic in her core and some twisted magic, out in the world.   
  
“Lily, take the wheel,” Aabha murmured. She stood, following Kit’s eyes out into the darkness. 

  
_Aabha_, Shanti urged. _Sit. Down._   
  
Aabha shook her head, still studying the distant, shadowed trees. That strange, wordless feeling kept tugging at the edge of her senses, pricking her intuition.   
  
_There’s something wrong here_, it kept whispering in her ear. _There’s something--_  
  
_There’s something _**_here_**_._  
  
Kit yanked Aabha down as a bright yellow lasbolt flew over their heads. There were more sharp cracks, like twigs snapping underfoot. Lily swerved, plumes of sizzling froth flying up from where the superheated bolts struck the water. There was a crunch, and the skimmer slid to a stop at the base of a tree, a glowing line gouged in the Remora’s undercarriage.   
  
Shadows descended around them, flowing out of the night like mist. Cloaked figures had them surrounded, perched on coiled roots or tree branches with rifles raised.   
  
Aabha reached beside her and took Kit and Lily’s hands, stopping them for going for their own weapons. She stood up and stepped forward as far as the skimmer’s chassis would allow, warily raising her hands in surrender.   
  
A voice came from the circle of phantoms gathered around them.   
  
“Who are you?” they demanded.   
  
“Agent Aabha Puri,” Aabha said levelly.   
  
The figure hesitated. “Puri?”  
  
A whistle cut through the gloom. To a man, the circle of figures shouldered their weapons.   
  
A phantom stepped into the light of the Remora’s headlamps and became a man; a lean, copper-skinned ranger, youthful by his long, dark hair and clean-shaven face, but mature by his wheat-gold officer’s jacket and the stern look in his eyes. He studied Aabha intently, his hawklike gaze flicking between her face and the badge on her armor.   
  
“...You’re with the Order?” he said, at last.   
  
“Yes,” Aabha replied. “Agent Aabha Puri, of Order asset Sparrow.”  
  
“Pathfinder Survey Corps,” he nodded. “Call me Iye.”  
  
“Iye, like… like ‘no’ in Japanese?” Kit wondered.   
  
“Close enough,” Iye shrugged.   
  
“We’re here to extract you,” Aabha said. “Can you show us to your camp?”  
  
“Yes, of course,” Iye nodded. “Follow me.”  
  
After a quick patch-job from Shanti, Strike One eased its way through the swamp, flanked by Iye and his rangers. On foot, they managed to keep pace with the skimmer by running from tree to tree, or scurrying across the gnarled tree roots that rose up out of the muck. While Kit was still annoyed with the Pathfinders-- she didn’t typically get along with people who shoot at her girlfriends-- she found herself watching them navigate the treetops with grudging admiration.   
  
“They’ve got style, if nothing else,” Kit admitted.   
  
“Better than wading through the mud,” Lily said. “As long as you don’t mind heights.”  
  
“There may be more to it than that,” Jaki mused, thoughtful. “I can feel something. Some piece of the distortion. There may be good reason to stay out of the water.”  
  
Unfortunately, there seemed to be no shortage of water on A-117B. As the team pushed forward, the tight, confined swamp broadened into a river, filled with that murky, lightless water. Iye’s Pathfinders ushered the Remora to the side, hugging the riverbank and keeping to the trees. In the distance, the river culminated in a waterfall, with a magnificent veil of water cascading over a cliff. In the light, it would have been breath-taking. But in the dark, it was a death trap-- a sheer drop you don’t see until it’s too late.   
  
The team passed through two palisade walls, bundles of logs lashed together and jabbed upright in the mud. They passed by guards with hollow eyes, greeting their comrades with muted nods and grunts. A pathway of flakboard paneling created a makeshift tile path through the ooze. Tents were raised on wooden platforms built above the mud. A starship formed the backbone of the campsite, nestled in against the cliffside, its side lamps trained on the yard below.   
  
A starship’s floodlights should have made the campsite clear as day, but these, like the Remora’s searchlights, were also somehow smothered by the dark and rendered dimmer than they should have been.The end result was a campsite lit with a morose half-light, and filled with a palpable anxiety. It was as if, rather than the walls and armed guards offering a sense of security, they just made the entire camp feel like it was cornered, with nowhere left to run.   
  
Lily set Strike One down on a wooden platform alongside a handful of patrol skimmers caked in grime. The mission team disembarked, grateful to be on solid ground-- for a certain value of “solid”, anyway. Flakboard was a cheap, readily-available material often used for constructing makeshift fortifications or reinforcing walls. It was good for stopping shrapnel and low-caliber hard rounds. Supporting the weight of multiple people atop muddy ground, less so.   
  
Aabha stepped out onto the platform. It shifted unpleasantly under her weight; just another thing adding to the general air of unease radiating out from beneath their feet.   
  
“Go get the doctor,” Iye said. “Tell him we have company.”  
  
A ranger nodded and scurried off into the ship at the back of the camp. Iye turned, to find Aabha approaching.   
  
“I’m going to need a situation report and a headcount of your staff,” Aabha said.   
  
“In time,” Iye said. Though softspoken, his voice was shockingly deep for his size. “Before anything else, however, there’s someone here you should see.”  
  
A man descended the ship’s open boarding ramp. He was tall and rake-thin, his willowy figure obscured by his meek demeanor and a tendency to slouch. He wore a faded beige suit over a dark red vest and matching tie, in sharp contrast to Iye’s fatigues. He wore thin-rimmed glasses on a chain around his neck. He had nut-brown skin, short, dark hair that was graying at the temples, and he flinched the instant he met Aabha’s eyes.   
  
He cleared his throat, hurrying down the tiled path to the Remora’s makeshift landing pad. He stood up straighter, clasping his hands formally behind his back.   
  
“Welcome, Agents,” he said stiffly, forcing a smile. “As one head of this joint expedition, we welcome you to our humble campsite and thank The Order for their--”  
  
“What are you doing here?” Aabha demanded.   
  
Jaki placed a gentle hand on Aabha’s shoulder. Kit and Lily exchanged glances.   
  
Dr. Anand Puri only closed his eyes, and sighed.   
  
“Hello, Aabha,” Anand said softly. “I can… I can explain.”  
  
~*~  
  
Dr. Puri, Pathfinder Iye, and the mission team reconvened inside one of the Pathfinder’s mobile outposts. It was a prefabricated building, a mass-produced brick of plasteel hollowed out into an instant office the size of an RV. Iye’s ship, the Horizon, carried a dozen more mounted on a rotating drum around its hull. Most furnishings within were stamped into the module from outside, creating raised lumps of molded plasteel that served as desks, chairs, tables, or cots. Simple, functional, and easily portable; perfect for an organization constantly on the move.   
  
Aabha, for her part, was grateful to be on more solid footing than on flakboard panels stuck to a muddy hill. But not even this factory-stamped prefab was untouched by the distortion afflicting this place. The electrical lighting within seemed dimmer, frailer than it should have been, somethered just like the Remora’s headlamps, and the plasteel floors were scuffed and caked in mud. The mud seemed to get into everything on this planet.   
  
Anand returned from a corner kitchenette with a mug of hot tea. He took in the assembled mission team, and awkwardly cleared his throat.   
  
“Can… can I offer you anything to drink?”  
  
“No, thanks,” Aabha said tersely. “Talk.”  
  
Anand frowned, dismayed. His eyes flicked towards Iye’s, wordless.   
  
“Maybe we should start at the beginning,” Iye said, stepping forward. “Six weeks ago, my unit of Pathfinders was sent here to assess A-117B’s habitability. Preliminary scans didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. Swamps, jungles. My team isn’t afraid of a little humidity, so we proceeded with our surveying on foot. Nothing but routine. That is, until we discovered the caves.  
  
“It was like something out of a fairy tale,” Iye continued. “Some child’s wondrous fantasy. A cave, carved into the side of a cliff, veiled by a waterfall. We’re standing on top of it as we speak. And inside that cave, there was a temple.  
  
“This planet was supposed to be uninhabited,” Iye said. “And neither our initial survey nor our preliminary scans showed any signs of an indigenous population. That is when I contacted Pathfinder HQ and requested an archeological consult.”  
  
Iye gestured to Anand.   
  
“Ah,” Anand cleared his throat. “That’s, ah, where I came in.”  
  
“Normally, a request to HQ would take quite some time to be processed, leaving my team to stay here in camp and sit on our thumbs,” Iye said.   
  
“But Iye and I have worked together on numerous occasions, and it just so happened that I was in the area,” Anand explained. “I came to volunteer my services. And, ah… as a friend.”  
  
“What did you find?” Jaki wondered.   
  
“Oh, it was extraordinary,” Anand said, his eyes lighting up. “Walls worn smooth by the passage of the water. Glyphs cut into the walls and lit by some sort of bioluminescence. And a sealed innermost chamber that I would give just about anything to examine, but, I supposed I’ll make do with the glyphs on the doors. Someone was here on A-117B, long before we ever were. Now they’re gone, and suddenly, I had the opportunity to discover why.”  
  
Anand’s smile faded. He looked down into his mug, studying his murky reflection.   
  
“...As a scholar, I was excited,” Anand said. “Never did it occur to me that there may have been an… unsavory reason that the makers of that temple aren’t here anymore.”  
  
“I hesitate to say ‘haunting’,” Iye said, “because it seems so unprofessional. And yet, the past month has brought too much that cannot be explained. Morale among my team is lower than ever. There have been fights, thefts. Half of my men are constantly on edge, paranoid, short-tempered. The others are lethargic, unfocused. They sleep half the day away and don’t look anyone in the eyes.  
  
“And there have been attacks, as well. Skirmishes with unseen enemies. Creatures that will swipe at the gates and then flee before anyone can get a good look. We were supposed to be the only ones here on A-117B. But there’s someone, or something, out there, testing our defenses. We’re not welcome here. They want us gone.”  
  
“Then leave,” Kit shrugged. “That sounds like a win-win to me.”  
  
“We would if we could,” Iye explained. “But the Horizon’s flight systems have been compromised. I have no estimate for how long it will be before it will be spaceworthy again.”  
  
_It’s the distortion,_ Shanti typed. _Your ship is parked right on top of a potential Breach. That’s what’s frying its systems. The same thing happened to us on our way in._  
  
“You’re serious?” Anand asked, bewildered. “You’re saying _ghosts_ are responsible for this?”  
  
“Of a sort,” Aabha said. “Dr. Puri, Pathfinder Iye, Order asset Sparrow is here today because Order Intelligence detected a potential Breach at this location. That Breach is what’s keeping the Horizon and probably our Remora grounded, as well as scrambling our comms. If you were willing to leave the Horizon and most of your equipment behind, I would offer to fly you all out on the Sparrow; but if all the interference stops us from flying, then we’ll be right back where we started. Right now, it seems like the only we’re all getting off this planet is if we track this distortion back to its source, find the Breach, and seal it.”  
  
“And _that _is easier said than done,” Jaki mused.  
  
“It sounds like your mission here is far less straightforward than you would have hoped,” Iye said. “For that, you have my sympathy.”  
  
“In the meantime, we will, of course, aid your investigation in any way we can,” Anand said. “The Horizon has plenty of modular habs set aside for fieldwork, and I’m sure Iye won’t mind setting you up with proper lodgings. And, um…”  
  
Anand faltered, sheepishly scratching the back of his head.   
  
“I don’t suppose we could… have a word in private, Aabha?”  
  
Aabha glowered. She pressed her lips into a line.   
  
“I don’t think that would be professional. Doctor.”  
  
Anand nodded, cowed.   
  
“...Of course. Agent.”  
  
Aabha turned towards her team, immediately annoyed by all the concerned faces. She flexed her fingers, took a deep breath, and let it out through her nose.   
  
“Aabha?” Lily offered.   
  
“I’m fine,” Aabha said, rather too quickly. “Father Amaro, this place should have an infirmary. Go see if you can lend them a hand. Chief Bryant, go check on the perimeter and see if you can do anything about their defenses. Kit, Lily, find ourselves somewhere in camp where we can set up shop. We don’t know how long it’ll be before we can get out of here, so we might as well get settled in.”  
  
“Aabha,” Kit urged.   
  
“_Kit_,” Aabha warned.  
  
Iye had pulled Anand away and was speaking to him quietly in the corner, while Anand meekly sipped his tea. Kit glanced from them over Aabha’s shoulder to Aabha herself, her arms folded across her chest, not looking Kit in the eye.   
  
“Jesus, Aabha, what did he do?” Kit murmured.   
  
“It’s not what he did,” Aabha said tightly. “It’s what he didn’t.”  
  
Aabha felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned, saw Lily’s eyes bright with concern, and saw that same concern reflected in the eyes of Kit, Jaki, and Shanti in turn.   
  
Aabha shrugged Lily’s hand off her shoulder, and marched out the door.   
  
“Let’s get to work.”  
  
~*~  
  
At Iye’s invitation, Shanti had taken a cursory look at the Horizon. She didn’t need long to determine that the issue wasn’t mechanical-- physically, the ship was fine, if a little muddy. The issue was with the software, scrambled by the Breach, and, unfortunately, software wasn’t Shanti’s area of expertise.   
  
So, instead, Shanti was playing to her strengths, and checking on the Pathfinders’ hardware. In that respect, the Pathfinders knew what they were doing. A double layered palisade wall and gate, two watchtowers equipped with mounted light machine guns, searchlights and plenty of ammo. All this, cut from local timber and raised in just a few days. As far as field fortifications went, this camp was pretty damn solid.   
  
It’s the people, Shanti was realizing. It’s the people that are the problem.   
  
Shanti was perched atop one of the watchtowers overlooking the gate, peering out into the darkness surrounding the camp. Some aspect of the distortion seemed to include artificially smothering light sources-- after a certain distance beyond the walls, the darkness told hold, refusing to be illuminated no matter how bright the camp’s floodlights were.   
  
Shanti reached up to her headset, and pulled her visor down over her right eye. Even her personal infrared scope couldn’t penetrate the gloom. The whole area beyond the camp was a fuzzy green, humid and stifling.   
  
A motion alert blinked on Shanti’s visor, and she turned, reflexively reaching for her sidearm. She relaxed when she saw it was just Iye, coming up the ladder.   
  
_Chief_, he seemed to say.   
  
Shanti held up a finger for ‘one moment’, and reached for her transciber drone sitting inactive in her hip pouch.   
  
_Do you sign?_ Iye asked.   
  
Shanti nodded. _Where did you learn?_  
  
_During the war,_ Iye signed. _On a battlefield, no one can hear a thing.__  
__  
_Shanti’s eyes flicked up to Iye’s faded wheat-gold fatigues. _Corinth?_  
  
_I was a scout for Planetary Defense,_ Iye said. _You?__  
__  
__I was a sniper for the Resistance, _Shanti said. _We never met. _  
  
Iye chuckled. _It was a big war._  
  
_I was thinking, you’re not quite as spooked about this distortion as the rest of your men,_ Shanti said. _Now I know why._   
  
_It’s a dubious honor,_ Iye smiled wryly. _It makes me wonder who’s really got it worse: the people who are just now seeing Malice for the first time, or the people who’ve seen it time and again..._  
  
~*~  
  
Jaki paced the rows of cots in the camp infirmary, feeling uncomfortably like the specter of Death. Not helping the imagery was his stark white thobe, somehow untouched by the ever-present mud and grime, seeming to glow in the camp’s dim half-light. But despite his grim vigil, the patients he was seeing were not quite at death’s door.   
  
The camp infirmary was full of a litany of recurring complaints: headaches, nausea, oversleeping, undereating, night terrors. But these were all psychosomatic symptoms-- the physical side effects of a mental distress.  
  
Depression. Anxiety. Fear. Paranoia. The Breach was poisoning these people’s minds, and in so doing, poisoning their bodies.   
  
Like Shanti had discovered with the Horizon’s flight systems, the real trouble is in the software, not the hardware.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
Jaki turned, and found Anand timidly poking his head in the door. Jaki pulled a curtain closed around the row of patient cots and welcomed him with a smile.  
  
“Dr. Puri, come in, come in,” Jaki said. “Can I offer a cure for what ails you?”  
  
“Maybe not in the next ten minutes,” Anand murmurs, sheepish.   
  
Jaki ushered him inside, and he took a seat, meekly clasping his hands on his lap.   
  
“Father Amaro,” Anand began. “It’s been quite some time. We met, once, when Aabha first mustered aboard the Sparrow. I’m, ah, sorry we haven’t talked much since then. But I’ve heard quite a lot about you in the Agents Telerian’s monthly updates.”  
  
“Good things, I hope,” Jaki chuckled.   
  
“Of course,” Anand nodded. “Um. Where are they now? Morgan and Syl.”  
  
“...You haven’t heard,” Jaki realized, frowning. “They’ve been… reassigned. It was through no fault of their own; ugly, intra-Order politics. But they’re teaching now, back on Providence Academy. Now Aabha herself is agent-in-command.”  
  
“Truly?” Anand wondered, a hand over his mouth. “That’s… well. That’s a two-edged sword, now, isn’t it?”   
  
Anand sighed. He leaned forward in his chair, resting his chin on his latticed fingers.   
  
“...I had wanted to thank Morgan and Syl, and-- and you, Father-- for taking care of Aabha all this time. To think, now she’s commanding her own team… it’s… it’s surreal. Honestly, where did the time go?”  
  
“In fairness, it has been a particularly busy six months,” Jaki said. “Our team has grown quite a bit since you saw Aabha off on Providence, all those years ago.”  
  
“Oh, Aabha…” Anand murmured. “She’s grown so much. And where have _I_ been for it all?”  
  
Jaki smiled in sympathy. “It can be bittersweet, watching a youth outgrow their mentors. I, myself, have seen many young people come and go under my care.”  
  
“Where did they go?” Anand wondered.   
  
“Where they always go,” Jaki said softly. “The way of mortals.”  
  
“You say that as if you aren’t one,” Anand chuckled.   
  
Jaki simply smiled, starlight in his eyes.   
  
Anand stared at the floor, wringing his hands. “I, uh… I heard what happened to Aabha. On Hypnos.” Anand swallowed. “She didn’t tell me. The, ah. The Telerians sent me the report.”  
  
Jaki frowned, but said nothing.   
  
“How has she been, Father?” Anand asked. “Has Aabha been well?”  
  
Jaki winced. “...As I’ve said, Dr. Puri, it has been a busy couple of months. I realize this is hardly the best time or place to catch up. But if you want to know, you could just ask Aabha yourself.”  
  
Anand shook his head, huffing out a sigh.   
  
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I could.”  
  
~*~  
  
“Aabha?”  
  
Aabha was standing by the door of a dorm block aboard the Horizon. She had a dataslate in her hand, and was reviewing their case doc on the palm-sized screen, her lips pressed into a line.   
  
Kit and Lily were sitting on a makeshift bed-- just a foam pad and a cover sheet atop a plasteel bedframe stamped into the prefab’s shell. They watched Aabha together, their eyes dark with concern.   
  
“Aabha,” Kit tried again. “Hey. Do you wanna, like… sit down?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Aabha said tersely, scrolling down her slate.   
  
“Aabha, maybe you should get some rest,” Kit said.   
  
“We have _work_ to do, Kit,” Aabha growled.   
  
“We need a plan,” Lily urged. “Listen. It’s late. We’re all tired. The darkness and the distortion field are fucking with our heads. If we’re in this for the long haul, maybe we should call it a night and get back to it in the morning, when we’re all fresh.”  
  
“I don’t want to just sit here and wait around,” Aabha said. “I don’t want to stay here and let the Breach mess with our heads any longer than we have to. And there’s something bothering me, about Dr. Puri-- like he’s hiding something.”  
  
“Come on, Aabha,” Lily said. “He’s your dad, isn’t he? Just talk to him.”  
  
“I don’t want to hear that,” Aabha snapped, glowering. “Not from you, of all people.”  
  
Lily recoiled as if slapped. She took a deep breath, before continuing. “...Aabha. Listen. Your dad isn’t a fucking crime lord, okay? He’s just scared.”  
  
“Yeah,” Aabha muttered. “Just like always.”  
  
Kit furrowed her brow. “Aabha, come here. Come _here_.”  
  
Kit plucked the slate out of Aabha’s fingers and tossed it aside, to Aabha’s muted protests. She took Aabha’s hand, and Aabha exhaled, the tension slipping from her shoulders. She squeezed Kit’s hand, and let her pull her down--  
  
Two sharp cracks, down the hall. Then a dozen more, almost like firecrackers, except it was unmistakably gunfire.   
  
Aabha burst into the next room, chakrams raised, Kit and Lily at her side. They emerged into the next dorm block down the hall-- a long, narrow room lined with bunk beds. While a few Pathfinders gawked from their cots, most had formed an anxious circle around two rangers at the head of the room.   
  
“Give me the gun,” Iye was saying, his hands up, wary.   
  
“I saw her!” the other ranger cried, frantic. “I’m telling you, I saw her!”  
  
“Give me the gun,” Iye insisted.   
  
“I was trying to save us from the girl!” the ranger cried, clutching his rifle to his chest. “She’s a thief! A killer! The one who steals from Death!”  
  
“Give. Me. The gun,” Iye repeated, his tone unwavering.   
  
Despite having a rifle pointed at his chest, Iye didn’t even blink-- what he did was take a knowing glance over his ranger’s shoulder as the girls slipped through the crowd. He caught Lily’s gaze across the room, saw the question in her eyes, and dipped his chin just a fraction of an inch.   
  
Lily racked her shotgun. The ranger whirled at the sound, raising his rifle.   
  
Iye shoved his aim down and jabbed him in the throat. The ranger gagged, stunned, as Iye curled into the larger man’s arms, yanked his rifle arm forward and leveraged him into a throw. The ranger slammed onto his back on the floorboards, all the air forced from his lungs. Iye pulled the rifle from his grasp, clicked on the safety, ejected the power cell, and tossed them aside in less than a second. The rifle and its power cell skittered under two different bunks.   
  
Two of Iye’s subordinates stepped forward to hoist the dazed man to his feet.   
  
“Check him for any other weapons, and bring him to the infirmary,” Iye said. The rangers muttered affirmatives, and dragged the poor man away.   
  
“I was trying to save us,” the man choked, tears in his eyes. “I was trying to save us all…”  
  
Anand hovered in the doorway, watching the man get ushered off. He quietly made his way to Iye’s side, who was pinching the bridge of his nose, troubled.   
  
“...I’m sorry you had to see that, Agents,” Iye began.   
  
Kit shrugged. “It’s no big. Did anyone get hurt?”  
  
“Physically, no,” Iye sighed, shaking his head. “Mentally, well…”  
  
Aabha stepped forward to get a closer look at the shooter’s damages. Fortunately, all of his shots managed to hit the wall or the ceiling without hurting anyone. But, as Aabha inspected the scorch marks of a dozen lasbolts, there was one thing that caught her eye: a poster of some pin-up model, caught in the shooter’s firing arc. Two stray bolts had struck the woman in the face, making it seem like she had no eyes.   
  
“She who steals from Death…” Aabha murmured, puzzled.   
  
“This is not uncommon, I’m afraid,” Anand explained. “The… the fear. The night terrors. The paranoia. The erratic behavior. Why just last night--”  
  
Anand bit his tongue, a stricken look on his face. Aabha’s gaze snapped to him in an instant.   
  
“...Go on,” Aabha pressed.   
  
Anand withered under Aabha’s gaze, wringing his hands. Iye sighed, and spoke for him.   
  
“...Last night, one of our researchers claimed she heard a young girl calling to her,” Iye said, wincing at the memory. “She walked right out of camp, all the way up to the cliffs. And then she disappeared.”  
  
“What?!” Lily hissed.   
  
“She didn’t jump,” Iye clarified. “She _vanished_. She walked into the dark without any gear, without any lamps, nothing. We think she was lured down into the ruins below us, guided by whatever or _whoever_ is waiting down there.”  
  
“Damn it!” Aabha hissed, glowering at her father. “Dr. Puri! Why didn’t you tell us this before?! We should be out there searching!”  
  
Anand faltered. “Y-You had just arrived, and I didn’t want to impose. I thought maybe we could take the time--”  
  
“Time is something that poor woman doesn’t have,” Aabha said. “Whatever entity is at the center of this Breach, it _wants_ us to wait. It wants us to sit here and wring our hands while it seeps into our heads. It wants us to stay trapped here, surrounded by fear and frustration, and let our minds tear us apart from the inside. It wants the satisfaction of seeing us succumb, one by one. What we need to do now is _act_.”  
  
Anand stared at the floor, ashamed. “...Agent Puri. There is one other reason I did not mention this sooner.”  
  
“What,” Aabha snapped.   
  
“This woman was my junior researcher,” Anand confessed. “As such, I am responsible for her. It would… reflect poorly on me if--”  
  
“‘Reflect poorly on you’?” Aabha snarled. “There is a person’s life at stake here. A _life_ is more important than your _reputation_.”  
  
Aabha felt Kit and Lily’s hands on her arms. She looked down, and noticed that her hands were balled into fists, little wisps of magical fire seeping out from between her fingers. She took a step back, took a deep breath, and flexed her fingers.  
  
“Get the team ready,” Aabha said. “We’re going to find this woman. And we’re going to find out who took her.”  
  
~*~


	2. The Disciple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter includes discussion of suicidal ideation. Please proceed with care.

_ ~*~ _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Darkness. That’s all there is down here-- darkness, and damp. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ She sits up on the rock she’d somehow managed to fall asleep on, easing the myriad cricks and aches in her joints. All around her, she hears the sound of water. Dripping from stalactites, trickling away in rustling streams, echoing off the stone walls. The sound of the water is her only indication of the size of the cave; she was afraid that she would be packed in tight in claustrophobic darkness, the walls closing in around her like a tomb. Instead, the cavern is an enormous vault, humbling and haunting in its size, its emptiness. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ She cringes in distaste at the moisture stiffening her clothes. Even the stone slab she’s sitting on is porous. Press hard enough, and beads of water seep out through the cracks, as if it were a sponge. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Her comm had stopped working hours ago. In the darkness, alone save for her own thoughts, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed. She reaches out, groping blindly, craving any sort of stimulus beyond the cavernous dark and the echoing water. Her fingers brush against cloth-- _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Instantly, there are two golden eyes upon her. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “S-Sorry!” she gasps out, yanking her hand away as if burned. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ The two golden eyes study her, shining like a cat’s in the darkness. In the dim light, she can just make out hair, a nose, a hood-- but then her captor looks away, staring intently at something only they could see. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “Who are you?” she asks, hardly for the first time. “What do you want with me?” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “What do you think?” her captor asks. Their (her?) voice sounds distressingly like a human child. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “Well…” she begins, thinking. “Um. Well, I… don’t think you’re here to kill me. I-I mean, if you did, you would have done it already, right?” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ The golden eyes flash her way. She withers. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “O-Or you can keep me alive longer! You know, _ ** _really_ ** _ savor it!” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Her captor narrows her eyes, before turning, gazing out into the dark. She sits up, hugging her knees to her chest, trying to follow her captor’s gaze. Whatever it is her captor’s looking at, or looking for, it’s not something that her eyes can see. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “Are you afraid?” her captor asks. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ She blinks, surprised. Not only because it’s rare for her captor to begin a conversation, but because, after a deep breath and a moment’s reflection… she isn’t. Curious, maybe. Captive, obviously. But not afraid. Not at all. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “No,” she breathes. “...You’re not here for _ ** _me_ ** _ , are you?” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Silence. Her hooded captor keeps her secrets. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “Then who?” she presses. “Who are you waiting for?” _ _  
_  
~*~  
  
“Aabha!” Anand cried. “Aabha, wait!”  
  
“I told you to stay here with Chief Bryant,” Aabha snapped, without so much as turning around.  
  
Anand hurried over to the edge of camp, where the mission team was preparing to embark. Aabha’s disdain was as palpable in the air as the smothering darkness encroaching upon the camp.  
  
“Aabha--” Anand began.  
  
“Yes, _ Doctor _ ?”  
  
Anand exhaled. “...Agent Puri, please. There must be something I can do.”  
  
“Haven’t you done enough?” Aabha muttered. “Team, let’s move.”  
  
“Just a moment, Aabha,” Jaki said gently, laying a patient hand on Aabha’s shoulder. He looked up, meeting Anand’s eyes. “Actually, Doctor, there may be something you can do to help.”  
  
“What? Yes! Anything!”  
  
“Do you have something that belonged to the missing woman?” Jaki asked. “If I have a token of strong enough sentimental value, it may help me to more accurately divine her location.”  
  
“I-- yes,” Anand blinked. He reached into his jacket, and retrieved a small leather sleeve. He handed it over. “Here. Her glasses. I was wondering why she wasn’t wearing them when she’d wandered off.”  
  
“Maybe because she was being led by something that could already see,” Iye mused.  
  
Jaki slipped the glasses out of their case. They were a pair of sleek, stylish cat’s-eye frames. Aabha narrowed her eyes at the sight, before pursing her lips and looking away.  
  
Jaki exhaled and closed his eyes, slipping into astral space. In that shadowed, halfway place, the light of life shone like a star-- usually. But there was a darkness spreading, threatening to engulf them all from below, and the shimmering lights of the team flickered and dimmed like candles in a strong breeze.  
  
Still, he could see it. A luminous thread, however faint, stretching downwards to a frail gray light below. And there was something else beside it-- an inscrutable presence, a mind Jaki dared not touch.  
  
“She’s alive,” Jaki exhaled, opening his eyes. For a brief moment, his eyes shone with nebulae and distant stars, before losing their unearthly glow. “She’s alive, and she’s below us, along with the source of the distortion.”  
  
“Then we don’t have any more time to waste,” Aabha said. “Let’s go.”  
  
“Agent Puri, please,” Anand pleaded. “You must let me join your search.”  
  
“What? No.”  
  
“She is my assistant, and my responsibility,” Anand begged. “I cannot just stand idly by.”  
  
Aabha huffed in frustration. “I _ won’t _ be responsible for bringing a civilian into a Breach--”  
  
“I know the way through the ruins,” Anand said. “I can show you the way.”  
  
“I will look after him, Agent Puri,” Iye volunteered. “I take full responsibility.”  
  
Aabha glanced between the two men. Anand, meek, his face pinched with anxiety. Iye, stoic and inscrutable.  
  
Aabha breathed out a sigh.  
  
“...Try to keep up.”  
  
Iye led them down the cliffs behind the Pathfinder camp, easing the team down a narrow, winding trail made slick and treacherous by the pervasive damp. Kit followed at Iye’s heels, finding herself annoyingly impressed with his abilities. He was so nimble and agile, the coyote to her fox. Yet despite his small stature, he seemed to radiate confidence and authority in the same way the tall, reedy Dr. Puri seemed to shrink when you so much as looked his way.  
  
Descending a steep slope with only a belt-mounted searchlight to help find your next foothold seemed like a recipe for disaster, but Iye guided the team down, step by step. And while the rest of the mission team felt slow and clumsy by comparison, Kit kept up with him every step of the way.  
  
“You’re good,” the veteran scout said, in that startling deep voice of his. “What were you before you joined the Order?”  
  
“A thief,” Kit said dryly.  
  
“Trouble,” Jaki offered.  
  
“A little bitch,” Lily teased.  
  
Kit rolled her eyes. “Girl, I will shove you _ right _ off this cliff…”  
  
They carefully picked their way down the slick slope, setting down on a rocky outcropping maybe three or four storeys below the Pathfinder camp. The trail leveled off, and they ventured forward, until they could see it; a rocky overhang above their heads, a yawning cavern before them and a massive curtain of water behind.  
  
The mission team stopped in their tracks. The roar of the waterfall was tremendously loud, and just passing beneath it was like walking through a wall of sound. But it was the cavern that gave them pause. The darkness within smothered their searchlights until they could barely see in front of their faces, and an eerie wind gusted out at them like the exhalation of something ancient and alive.  
  
Anand gazed up at the stone archway marking the entrance to the temple, so high above it was scarcely visible in the lamplight. Despite its size, the cavern felt oppressive, stifling. Anand wrung his hands, suddenly feeling very, very small.  
  
“...I have a bad feeling about this,” he murmured.  
  
Lily unclipped the searchlight hanging from her belt. She popped out the power cell, blew into the casing, replaced the cell and relit it with a smack.  
  
“Piece of junk,” Lily muttered, slapping the side of the casing as if it would coax the light into brightening. “The beam goes forward like three feet and then it just… stops.”  
  
“The distortion is smothering sources of light,” Aabha said. “But I wonder…”  
  
Aabha held out her hands, heat haze blurring her fingertips.  
  
Fire blazed around the team, sending Anand jumping back with a start. Wisps of saffron fire spiraled around the team in long ribbons of golden light. He watched, fear morphing into awe, as Aabha gathered fire into an orb around her clasped hands, spiraling into her grasp like spun sugar around a paper cone.  
  
Aabha thrust her hands skyward. Her summoned fireball rose into the air and pulsed, shining like a second sun above their heads. The darkness, so thick it was suffocating, cringed away from the saffron light, chased into the depths of the cavern, the shadows hissing in pain and outrage as they fled along the ground.  
  
In the smothering dark, Aabha made her own light.  
  
Anand gazed up at Aabha’s summoned fireball, floating above their heads like a magicked chandelier. This was the first time he had seen Aabha’s power in years. Compared to the last, well… it was breathtaking.  
  
“Dr. Puri,” Aabha said, her stern voice snapping Anand out of his trance.  
  
“What? Yes.”  
  
Aabha gestured towards the waiting cavern.  
  
“Lead the way.”  
  
The mission team made their way into the caves, haloed in the saffron light of Aabha’s conjured torch. The roar of the waterfall at the entrance slowly faded into the distance, replaced by their wet footsteps echoing off the vaulted ceiling. Flowing creeks babbled away, close by but unseen.  
  
The ground was uneven beneath their feet. The walls were covered in carved glyphs in a language the team had never seen; the floors were lined with channels cut into the stone. Elaborate sigils took shape on the stone beneath them, elegant, looping whorls. They might have been beautiful, once. But now, they were overflowing, spilling over and coating the cavern floor with water.  
  
“Look at this,” Anand was saying, his eyes glinting with enthusiasm. “You were saying that this… distortion smothers light, yes? It’s a shame, because you can’t see it now, but every one of these carvings is inlaid with bioluminescent minerals. These designs… they glow in the dark. And look, look here, at these channels beneath our feet. Isn’t it fascinating?”  
  
“Do tell,” Lily humored him, bemused.  
  
“Well,” Anand chuckled sheepishly, pushing his glasses up on his nose, “you would think, after all this time and all this running water, that these channels would have been worn smooth and level with the rest of the ground. But they’ve somehow managed to keep their shape! Look at this, just _ look _ at this. The detail, the craftsmanship. Something so intricate couldn’t be merely decorative, could it? Perhaps some kind of ritual purpose…”  
  
“I’ve got a theory,” Lily suggested.  
  
Anand’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Yes, by all means!”  
  
“What if… you _ killed _ a guy…”  
  
Anand paled. “...oh.”  
  
“...and then his blood drained into those grooves in the floor and made a sweet pattern?”  
  
Anand coughed. “I, uh. I hadn’t considered that.”  
  
“Why do you have to go _ there _ ?” Kit teased. Lily punched her in the arm.  
  
Iye raised a closed fist and brought the team to a halt. He unshipped his rifle, slung across his chest, peering into the darkness. Aabha came up beside him, drawing the chakrams slung against her hips.  
  
“What is it?” Aabha whispered.  
  
“Listen,” Iye said.  
  
The roaring waterfall had faded into the distance, and the team’s own sloshing footsteps had stopped in their tracks. The sound of running water was constant, pervasive. But there was something else, now-- a rhythmic tapping or clicking of something against stone.  
  
Then Aabha saw it: two bobbing, glinting green lights, like eyes in the dark.  
  
Iye snapped his rifle up to his shoulder.  
  
“Who’s there?” he barked.  
  
There was one more tap against the stone. The green lights flashed, then faded.  
  
Then the cavern filled with the sound of furious, charging footsteps.  
  
Iye flicked a switch on his rifle and hosed the tunnel with automatic fire. Sizzling red lasbolts cut into the gloom, illuminating claws, fangs--  
  
The first of their foes burst into the light: a chalk-white, wolf-like outline filled in with inky darkness and trailing wisps of shadow with every step. It opened its faceless maw, fangs glinting like obsidian.  
  
A burning chakram sliced the creature in two and it melted into smoke and tar.  
  
“Form up!” Aabha commanded, her chakram zipping back into her grasp. “Stay together! Stay in the light!”  
  
~*~  
_  
_ _ She snaps towards the sudden sound-- a staccato of what sounds for all the world like gunfire. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “It’s time,” her captor says, reverent. “They’re here.” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “So that’s it?” she asks, affronted. “What was I, then? Just bait?” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “Would you rather I killed you as well?” her captor asks flatly. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ She can’t help but pout. “Well… no… but--” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “You are strong of heart. You’re of no use to me,” her captor says. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ She hears the sharp crack of claws against stone. Her captor digs something out of the wall and tosses it to her. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “Go now. Leave this place. If you can find the way.” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ She looks down at the object cradled in her hands: a crystal, emitting a warm amber glow. Out of curiosity, she raises the crystal, hoping to get a clearer glimpse of her captor. But her captor has turned away, leaving her with only a hooded silhouette and the vague swish of a long, sinuous tail beneath her cloak. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “What are you going to do?” she wonders. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Her captor takes a deep breath and sighs, her voice echoed by the wind howling through the winding halls. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “My mother will be returning soon,” her captor murmurs. “I must prepare to receive her guests.” _  
  
~*~  
  
“Doc! Doc, get behind me!”  
  
Lily yanked Anand back from a shadow beast’s snapping jaws. She shoved him into the center of the circle, and reflexively drew her derringer as it fell down her sleeve. Three shots whistled harmlessly through a shadow beast’s head as it sailed towards her, jaws wide.  
  
Kit darted in at the last moment and smashed the beast aside, wrestling it onto the ground. She plunged her dagger through its chest and pinned it to the ground. But it did not die; it squirmed and thrashed, its form flickering, insubstantial, around her blade, like plunging a knife into smoke.  
  
“Urgh!” Kit struggled. “Aabha!”  
  
A shining white pole punched through the creature’s chest. It vanished in a flash of smoke and violet light.  
  
“Energy weapons!” Jaki urged. He plucked his ankh-headed staff out of the water and smashed another pouncing phantom out of the air. He leveled his staff like a spear and sent a beam of deep violet power cutting through the onrushing swarm.  
  
Kit drew her heat blade, thumbing the activation stud, and cut a burning swathe through the horde. She stepped forward, covering Lily as she switched weapons. She plunged the red-hot blade into a phantom’s head until it burst into bubbling ink, and sliced another phantom right down the middle, cleaving its torso from its legs. Another phantom leapt over the body of its fallen brethren.  
  
Lily’s shotgun roared. The phantom snap-froze mid-jump and shattered when it hit the ground.  
  
Aabha caught a phantom wolf by the jaws on one of her ring blades. She punched her chakram into its throat, turned, and tore open its fellow with a tight, scissoring slash. It fell at her feet, wisping smoke. So many had fallen that they were staining the water black. Still, they came.  
  
Iye’s rifle clicked empty. He ejected the spent power cell, ducking, unfazed, beneath one of Aabha’s chakrams whizzing right over his head. He neatly sidestepped it as it returned obediently to her hand, clicked in a new cell, and kept on firing.  
  
“We have to push forward!” Aabha called. “Doctor! Which path do we take?”  
  
“What?” Anand called. He yelped in fear as a phantom came barreling his way. Above him, Aabha’s torch pulsed, and swatted the lunging creature aside with a fireball. He looked up, cringing, studying the fork in the tunnels ahead.  
  
“...I…” he paled. “I don’t know! This wasn’t here before!”  
  
“What?! Make sense!” Aabha snapped.  
  
“I mean it!” Anand said, frantic. “There was no crossroads the last time I was here! There were no branching tunnels! There was just a single, straight path!”  
  
A tremor shot through the cavern. Down one of the three forking tunnels, an ominous gurgling could be heard.  
  
Aabha’s eyes went wide.  
  
“Everyone hold on!” she cried.  
  
Aabha’s fingertips shone with arcane power. Her torch unraveled into ribbons of flame, before spiraling around the team and forming a brilliant, burning dome.  
  
A torrent of water gushed down the tunnel and smashed into Aabha’s barrier with a furious hiss. The flood met the flames and erupted into steam. Aabha dug her heels in, gritting her teeth, sweat dripping down her brow, a halo of fire lighting up her hair like a crown…  
  
It wasn’t enough.  
  
The deluge engulfed Aabha’s flame and hurled her off her feet. For one, sickening moment, the whole world was nothing but darkness and spinning and a sharp ache in her lungs. But then, the water drained out through the mouth of the cavern, and the flood subsided.  
  
A fallen shadow beast, lying half submerged in a puddle, shrieked and snarled, baring its glistening obsidian fangs.  
  
Aabha punched a shining chakram into its throat and let it melt into smoke, an ink-black stain washing down the way they came.  
  
Aabha coughed, and pulled herself up onto her hands and knees. Her armor’s waterlogged skirts and sari were weighing her down. But more than that, it was the return of the claustrophobic darkness, oppressive, palpable in the air.  
  
In the distance, there were a pair of hearty smacks. A light blinked on, immediately smothered by the darkness around them. A high-powered searchlight, rendered no brighter than a candle.  
  
“Agent Puri?” Iye called.  
  
“I’m here!” Aabha called. She stood, and raised her chakram, the blade glowing like a torch.  
  
Iye came up, and acknowledged Aabha with a nod.  
  
“Guys?” Aabha called. “Is everyone alright?”  
  
“Agent Puri,” Iye urged. “You should see this.”  
  
Aabha’s fingertips shone with magic. She gathered fire to her hands and cast the orb into the ceiling, forming another conjured torch.  
  
In the saffron firelight, Aabha could see where they were. They were, somehow, exactly where they were before, at the crossroads of three branching tunnels.  
  
Except there was no crossroads. There was only a single, straight path, smooth stone where the other tunnels should have been, and the rest of the team nowhere in sight.  
  
Aabha exhaled.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
~*~  
  
Kit groaned, dragging herself out of the water and laying on her back on a stone slab. She turned, her inhuman eyes glinting crimson in the low light. A vague figure resolved beside her.  
  
“Lily? Is that you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Lily grumbled. She was wringing water out of her coat, before slipping the wrinkled garment back on. “You okay?”  
  
“More or less,” Kit said. She punched her palm into her fist. A magicked wind burst out from her form, reducing her and Lily from ‘soaking wet’ to merely ‘unpleasantly damp’.  
  
“Thanks,” Lily muttered. “Still feel gross, though. As soon as we get back to the Sparrow, I’m taking a hot shower.”  
  
“You’ll have to get in line, sister,” Kit shrugged. “I permanently called first shower.”  
  
“What? Fuck off. You do not get first shower every time.”  
  
“Okay, you wanna fight me for it?”  
  
“...Maybe.”  
  
Kit grinned. It was always easy to when Lily was around. But as she scanned the area with her inhuman eyes, her grin slowly faded away.  
  
“What can you see?” Lily asked.  
  
“Barely anything,” Kit admitted. “That flood must have washed us down one of the tunnels.”  
  
“No comms,” Lily reported, tapping at her link. “Can’t get a fix on Aabha’s badge. Let me see if-- aw, shit.”  
  
A few pieces of cracked casing clattered onto the stone floor.  
  
“Belt lamp’s busted,” Lily groaned.  
  
“Hey,” Kit nudged an elbow against Lily’s. “What if we just made out?”  
  
“What, like right now?”  
  
“Yeah. Why not?” Kit shrugged. “I mean, what else can we do?”  
  
“How about we try looking for Aabha first, genius?”  
  
“You’re right. It just wouldn’t be the same without her.”  
  
“Punk,” Lily muttered fondly. She reached for her baton in a leather hip holster and snapped it open.  
  
“Whoa, hey! Hey!” Kit yelped. “What are you doing whippin’ out a stun baton when we’re ankle-deep in water?”  
  
“Alright, Kit, then I’ll just whip out a shotgun when I can barely see in front of my face,” Lily drawled.  
  
“Just follow me, alright?” Kit rolled her eyes. They began picking their way down the tunnel, carefully choosing their footholds on the slick, wet stone.  
  
It wasn’t long before they saw it-- an amber light, bobbing in the distance.  
  
Kit and Lily exchanged glances. Kit raised a finger to her lips for quiet. She drew her heat blade, and activated the blade with a click.  
  
~*~  
  
“Doctor. Doctor!”  
  
Anand sputtered and coughed, kneeling on all fours. He looked up, saw Jaki’s offered hand, and took it, letting the old priest hoist him to his feet.  
  
Anand groaned, swiping water from his suit. He wiped his glasses and set them back on his nose, blinking in the low light.  
  
“Father Amaro. Where are we? What happened?”  
  
“The flood carried us down one of the tunnels,” Jaki explained.  
  
Anand frowned. “...These tunnels… I swear, I meant what I said. These tunnels did not exist when I first surveyed this place. You believe me, don’t you?”  
  
“I do,” Jaki nodded. “I sense an intent behind this. A will set against us.”  
  
Jaki tapped his chin thoughtfully, glancing between the stone walls and the water underfoot.  
  
“Earth and water…” he mused, frowning.  
  
“Father?” Anand wondered. Even though Jaki was wearing all white, he still had to squint to see him.  
  
“It’s nothing,” Jaki waved the thought away. “Here. Let me help you.”  
  
Jaki tapped his staff against the ground. A gentle violet glow seemed to spread throughout the surrounding dark. Anand watched, entranced.  
  
“Wow,” Anand murmured in awe. “Did your power create this light?”  
  
“It isn’t always about making your own light,” Jaki said. “Sometimes, it’s about learning to see in the dark.”  
  
“I see…” Anand nodded sagely.  
  
“...It’s not that deep,” Jaki chuckled. “I’m being quite literal. I briefly granted you greater vision in low light.”  
  
“...I see,” Anand said dryly.  
  
“Come,” Jaki said. “Let us proceed.”  
  
With the way back sealed, there was no choice but to move forward. Jaki led the way, Anand by his side. For his part, Anand seemed somewhat more at ease. Despite not having any riveting archeological finds to expound upon in loving detail, there was something about him now that just seemed more relaxed. Perhaps it was because, through Jaki’s power, the oppressive, claustrophobic darkness that plagued these halls had given way to a gentle, serene twilight. Or perhaps it was because Aabha, and all the tension surrounding her, was still in the main tunnel.  
  
“It’s strange, seeing Aabha in command of her own team,” Anand mused as they walked.  
  
“How so?” Jaki asked. “I thought you would be proud.”  
  
“I am. Tremendously,” Anand insisted. “And yet… it pains me, somehow. She’s so strong now. A grown woman, leading Order operatives into battle against forces I can scarcely imagine. I’m her father, but her strength didn’t come from me. I’m not strong like she is. I’m just… a coward.”  
  
“Courage and cowardice exist in every man,” Jaki said. “They are fleeting things, like all our feelings.”  
  
“Is that right?” Anand chuckled mirthlessly. “I’ve felt like a coward all my life. Aabha, thank goodness, didn’t get that from me.”  
  
Anand took a deep breath and let it out slow, a wistful look in his eyes.  
  
“...It’s going to sound trite, because of all the literal fire she has at her fingertips. But I see this flame inside Aabha. It’s something I admire, and yet, something I also envy. She gets that from her mother, y’know. So decisive. So strong. So much… conviction.”  
  
Anand shook his head.  
  
“Say what you will about the rest of her, but Aabha’s mother certainly had conviction, for better or worse. That’s the fire I see in her today. Aabha’s mother made her who she is.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s the way she sees it,” Jaki offered.  
  
“You don’t think so?” Anand asked. “I feel like I’ve spent years lingering in the periphery of Aabha’s life. She never fought with me the way she did her mother. But for all her faults, at least Dipti has made a difference in Aabha’s life. Can I say the same?”  
  
Anand took a shuddering breath. He took his glasses off and wiped his eyes.  
  
“‘There’s nothing left for me there’,” Anand murmured. “That’s what she said to me. When she finished her mandated training and became a licensed, registered mage, and was jumping at the chance to join The Order. I asked her if she would have liked to work closer to home.”  
  
Anand huffed out a pained sigh. “‘Nothing left.’ Maybe she was right.”  
  
Jaki frowned, his heart aching with sympathy. “...Forgive me, Doctor. I wish I could offer better counsel.”  
  
“We don’t all need counselors, Father,” Anand said. “Some of us need only confessors.”  
  
Jaki didn’t know what to say. Anand looked up suddenly, blinking.  
  
“Do you hear that?” Anand wondered.  
  
Jaki narrowed his eyes. “Hear what?”  
  
Jaki stopped. But Anand kept walking, veering away from the center of the path.  
  
“...I can hear her,” he murmured. “She’s… calling me…”  
  
“Dr. Puri,” Jaki said sharply. “Step back.”  
  
Anand kept walking, in a daze, until--  
  
He splashed ankle-deep into a puddle and jumped, startled.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Anand blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “What… What was I saying…?”  
  
Anand vanished under the water with a splash and a strangled cry, dragged down by some unearthly force. The current ripped him away and hurled him down the tunnel on a plume of froth and thrashing limbs.  
  
“Dr. Puri!” Jaki cried after him. “Dr. Puri!”  
  
~*~  
  
“Dr. Puri, come in,” Aabha tried, to no avail. She tapped at her comm. “Jaki, come in. Kit? Lily? Away team to Sparrow, come in. Anyone?”  
  
Beside her, Iye was cleaning out his waterlogged lasrifle. He ejected the clip, clicked in a fresh one, and tried firing a test shot into the ceiling. A fat, unfocused bolt hit the ceiling and fizzled out into sparks.  
  
“Agent Puri,” Iye said. “Do we proceed?”  
  
Aabha sighed. “Well. ‘Do or die’ isn’t much of a choice. We need to get to the bottom of this Breach, or none of us is getting off this planet intact.”  
  
“Understood,” Iye nodded. “Well. There’s no more fork in the road. The only way to go is forward.”  
  
“Sometimes, that’s what it takes,” Aabha said. “Let’s move.”  
  
They pushed forward into the cavern, with only one route available to them. It was easy going, on level if sodden ground. The cavern opened up, and up, until they emerged into a vast chamber hollowed out of the plateau. All around them, stone slabs rose in steps, forming tiers of risers overlooking the approach. A great arch stood before them, and in that arch, a stone doorway three storeys high.  
  
“This is it,” Iye said. “This is the inner sanctum Dr. Puri spoke of. These are the doors we couldn’t get open. If we could--”  
  
Iye snapped his aim up to the stone risers above them, only to misfire. Aabha slung a chakram up the steps, but it smacked against the lip of the step and zipped back into her hand. The figure disappeared.  
  
“Did you see him?” Iye hissed.  
  
Two green lights, like eyes in the dark.  
  
“Yes,” Aabha glowered. “What’s that snake doing here?”  
  
The shadows flickered strangely in the light of Aabha’s summoned torch. In the distance, they heard howling, and the rhythmic wet slap of paw pads on slick stone.  
  
“Pathfinder Iye,” Aabha began, “you wouldn’t happen to have a knife, would you? Hatchet, maybe?”  
  
“Tomahawk?” Iye offered.  
  
“That’ll do,” Aabha said. She tapped a chakram against the blade, infusing it with the warm saffron glow of her magic.  
  
Iye clipped his now-useless rifle to his chest strap, making a few practice swings with his tomahawk. He glanced over his shoulder.  
  
“Do you think you can get that door open?” he asked.  
  
“I could,” Aabha winced, “if I had Jaki with me to work out these inscriptions, or if I had Shanti, Vincent, and a big heckin’ bomb. But it looks like I’m gonna have to do this the hard way.”  
  
Aabha clapped her hands together, as if in prayer. A shining magic circle materialized across the gates, spreading until it filled the archway from end to end. Aabha took a deep breath, and thrust her hands forward.  
  
A cascade of brilliant fire blazed out of her hands and smashed into the stone door. The radiant heat scorched the inscriptions right off the gate, as well as flash-drying the moisture lingering in Aabha’s clothes.  
  
Iye glanced over his shoulder at the pyroclasm happening behind him, and raised a single stoic eyebrow.  
  
“Kids today,” he said dryly. He turned back towards the tunnel, tomahawk in hand, as the first shadow beasts charged into the light.  
  
~*~  
  
“Hello? Is there someone there?”  
  
Kit and Lily exchanged glances. Kit lowered her sword.  
  
“Who’s there?” she called.  
  
Kit wasn’t sure what answer she was expecting, but she certainly wasn’t expecting a giddy squeal. She came running down the tunnel, a golden glow bobbing in her hand, a glow which Kit realized was a crystal-- a second before the girl had thrown her arms around her neck.  
  
“Well, this is moving kinda fast,” Kit said dryly.  
  
“Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god,” the girl wailed, hugging Kit to her chest. She pulled her back to arms’ length, breathless with relief. “Oh my god. You’re-- you’re human. You’re human, right?”  
  
“Technically? No,” Kit said. “But, uh, we _ are _ here to rescue you.”  
  
“We’re with the Order, miss,” Lily said, flashing the Order crest on her lapel. “What’s your name?”  
  
She told them. Kit and Lily glanced at each other, eyes wide.  
  
“...Come on,” Kit said. “We’re getting you out of here.”  
  
~*~  
  
Anand woke up.  
  
He reached for the glasses hanging around his neck, and propped them on his nose. The stars in the sky were not stars; they were bioluminescent crystals glimmering across the walls. And the floor was not a floor. He sat up, taking in his surroundings. The angled stone slab he was sitting upon. The intricate grooved design cut into the floor at his feet.  
  
And the eyes. Two shining golden eyes that had been haunting him for weeks.  
  
“You,” he breathed, aghast.  
  
The priestess smiled at him from the altar, and bowed her head.  
  
“I’ve seen you… in my dreams…” Anand murmured. He gasped. “Where did you take--”  
  
“She’s gone,” the priestess said. “I let her go. You didn’t come here for her, anyway.”  
  
Anand stared at her. His mouth was suddenly very dry.  
  
“What do you mean by that?”  
  
The priestess stepped forward, pacing around the stone slab Anand was sitting upon. Despite the dim light, he could see her perfectly; so childlike and yet so very inhuman. Violet skin. White hair. Double-jointed legs that ended in claws. A long, sinuous tail tipped in a vicious, bony scythe. All this hidden under a midnight-blue cloak, a hood propped up by curved horns, and those stunning, ethereal golden eyes.  
  
“You are here at my Mother’s invitation,” the priestess said. “You came because you want what only she can offer.”  
  
“And what, exactly, is that?” Anand demanded.  
  
The priestess smiled.  
  
“An end.”  
  
The priestess retrieved something from her cloak. She offered it to Anand with both hands.  
  
Anand took the blade with shaking fingers. A shard of obsidian, with a hilt of coiled wire.  
  
An athame. A ritual knife.  
  
“Can you do it?” the priestess asked.  
  
Anand shuddered. He put a hand over his mouth, biting back a sob.  
  
“No. No, no no… this… this isn’t why I’m here.”  
  
“It is,” the priestess urged. “You wouldn’t have heard my mother’s call if it wasn’t. One last job, for an old friend. One last trip.”  
  
“No. No, that’s not… that’s not what I was planning--”  
  
“You’ve thought about this before.”  
  
“Yes. I mean, no! Never!”  
  
“And you’ve seen your daughter’s strength. You know she’s strong enough to go on without you.”  
  
“Stop this! Let me out of here! Let me out!”  
  
“Why?” the priestess demanded. “Are you afraid?”  
  
Anand swallowed hard. “...Yes.”  
  
“Then do it,” the priestess smiled a sickening smile. “You will be free. Free of fear, free of pain. And you will never be alone.”  
  
Anand took a shuddering breath. “If you want me dead so badly… why don’t you take this dagger and kill me yourself?”  
  
“Because it takes a willing sacrifice to truly embrace my Mother’s gift.” The priestess gazed at him with those golden eyes. “Are you willing?”  
  
Anand stared at the knife in his hands, tears in his eyes.  
  
“...Yes.”  
  
Time slowed to a crawl. There was a strange disconnect with Anand and his body. It was like he was standing outside himself, watching him prepare himself to be a sacrifice on a stone slab. Years of grief, of pain, of fear and insecurity and failure, weighed his limbs down like lead. But still, his arms moved of their own accord, and positioned the gleaming obsidian blade right above his heart.  
  
His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. He slurred his words, as if entranced.  
  
“I know who you are,” he mumbled, gazing into the priestess’ shining golden eyes. “I know your name.”  
  
“Then say it,” she cooed, “and be reborn.”  
  
Jaki’s staff struck the ground and sent a wave of violet power through the chamber. Anand gasped with a start, dropping the ritual knife in horror. He scrambled his way off of the stone slab, half-running, half-crawling his way to Jaki’s side. He sat on the floor, staring at his hands.  
  
“What did I do?” he begged. He stared up at Jaki, tears in his eyes. “What did I do?!”  
  
“Be still,” Jaki said gently. “It’s what you didn’t do.”  
  
Jaki rose to his full height, his white robe shining in the glittering darkness of the sanctum.  
  
“ _ I _ know what you are, child,” Jaki declared. “I know your true name.”  
  
“You are not welcome here, _ psychopomp _ !” the priestess snapped. She whipped the fallen dagger through the air.  
  
The dagger shattered against Jaki’s staff and fell into pieces. Jaki strode forward, undeterred.  
  
“Earth and water,” Jaki intoned. “The heralds of Decay and Despair, you who steal from Death. I know your story, for the dead have spoken to me through your mediums-- through the earth. Through the water.  
  
“We were not the first to discover A-117B. There was another group, a colony ship one thousand years ago, at the very beginning of the Alliance’s expansion into space. But their equipment failed, and they were sent off-course, stranded on a swamp world with no hope of rescue.  
  
“Your Mother came to them, in their dreams, and began to take root in their hearts. Instead of building a colony, they built this temple to her. They worshipped her, and declared all dark, empty spaces to be her domain. One by one, they sacrificed themselves to her.  
  
“But misery loves company, you see. And it is Malice’s nature to spread, to infect. But there was no one else; no one to spread the outbreak to, no one to share in your worship. So you stayed here, and they stayed here, until their bones were nothing but dust and their souls were trapped within these walls.  
  
“Your Mother created you to keep the faith,” Jaki intoned. “And I’ve no doubt that’s what you _ think _ you’re doing. You awakened last night because you thought you’d found a worthy sacrifice. But all you’ve done is attempt to lure an innocent man to his death.  
  
“If someone dies under the influence of the Aspects of Decay and Despair, they will, indeed, be reborn. Their body will become a vanguard of a new undead army, and their soul will linger as a ghost that will lure others to this place as a staging ground for a Malefic incursion. They will be cut off from the natural cycle of life and death. And that, I’m afraid, is something I cannot allow.”  
  
The priestess considered this for a long moment, clenching and unclenching her fists. She looked up at Jaki, her golden eyes glinting in the light.  
  
“...What would you have me do?”  
  
“Stand aside, child,” Jaki said reverently, “and let me put them to rest.”  
  
The priestess’ voice was suddenly very small.  
  
“Then… I’ll be alone.”  
  
“Maybe so,” Jaki said. “But it’s time, child. Time to let the dead be dead.”  
  
The priestess met Jaki’s deep brown eyes. She bowed her head, and stepped aside.  
  
Jaki strode up to the stone sacrificial altar, a gentle violet glow suffusing his staff. He struck his staff against the floor, and in an instant, the oppressive darkness plaguing this place was subsumed by a vivid violet twilight.  
  
_ “Lost souls, hear my voice. I call to you from across the River. I call you to the true path that waits along the Sunless Road…” _  
  
A tremor shivered the cavern. A strong breeze gusted down the tunnels, and voices rose in an unearthly chorus.  
  
Anand rose to his feet, staring in awe. Even the priestess seemed to watch Jaki’s ritual with a certain fascination.  
  
The priestess flinched, clutching her head. For a moment, just a moment, her golden eyes shone a sickly green.  
  
“...no…” she seethed. “...no, no, no…”  
  
She charged forward, and leapt into a somersault, her scything tail lashing down.  
  
“Father!” Anand cried.  
  
Jaki turned, and darted aside just as the priestess’ bladed tail sliced a groove down the center of the altar. She lunged at him again and he smacked her aside with his staff, sending her skittering across the stone floor. She dug her claws into the floor and dragged herself to a stop, sparks flying from her scratches in the ground.  
  
“What are you doing?” Jaki cried.  
  
“I won’t let you take them from me!” she shrieked.  
  
There was a colossal bang. The gates to the inner sanctum crumbled inward on a plume of brilliant fire. Aabha burst into the sanctum, Iye by her side. She blew out a sigh, swiping an arm across her forehead.  
  
“Ugh, god, that took forever!” Aabha groaned. She yelped and swiped her chakrams aside, deflecting a pair of thrown knives. An instant later, the priestess was upon her.  
  
The priestess shoved Aabha down onto her back in the burning wreckage of her church, her claws scraping off her armor. Iye tackled the girl off of Aabha and got a kick to the chin for his trouble. Aabha stood, only for the priestess to hit them both-- Iye with a spinning kick that smashed him into the doorframe, Aabha with her tail on the backspin. Aabha grunted and stumbled back, a deep gouge cut into her chestplate.  
  
The priestess snarled. She clenched her fists, and two pairs of bony spines extended from her wrists. She leaped onto Aabha in a frenzied rage--  
  
Jaki’s staff struck the ground. The priestess stopped in her tracks, suspended by an aura of violet light.  
  
Aabha thrust her hands into the girl’s chest and blasted her away in a wave of fire.  
  
She hit the ground rolling, her cloak in tatters. She got to her feet, tears leaving streaks down the soot on her face. Aabha met the girl’s eyes, guilt spearing through her chest, but then she was gone. She stepped into a puddle of water and vanished, a shadow under the waves.  
  
All while this was happening, Jaki’s ritual had gone off-the-rails. A sickly green light had tainted his beautiful starscape, corroding it, burning it. A conflux of souls was gathering in the vaulted ceiling, pulsing with light and anger.  
  
“Father, what’s going on?!” Aabha yelled over the cacophony of furious spirits.  
  
“Sabotage,” Jaki shook his head. “We need to get out of here now.”  
  
Aabha’s comm shrieked in her ear. After a whole day of the distortion blocking it out, it seemed dreadfully loud.  
  
_ “Sparrow to away team, come in, away team,” _ Crane sent.  
  
“This is away team, go!” Aabha cried, ushering the team out of the temple.  
  
_“The distortion field has dropped, and comms are getting through. But we just detected a massive spike of psionic energy at the distortion point--”_  
  
“We know!” Aabha cried. “Get word to Shanti on the ground. She’s in the Pathfinder camp! Get them packed up and ready to fly! We’re leaving! Extraction in thirty minutes!”  
  
Kit, Lily, and the missing research assistant were all waiting at the entrance to the caves, haloed by the waterfall.  
  
“Hey!” Kit demanded, as they came rushing up. ‘What the hell happened in there?”  
  
“Read about it in the mission report!” Aabha called. “Everyone out!”  
  
~*~  
  
Defeating the temple keeper was like lifting a veil from the planet. All at once, comms were restored, light was no longer smothered, and the Horizon’s compromised flight systems were suddenly working just fine. At Shanti’s urging, the Pathfinders loaded up the Horizon and fled the planet. Moments later, the Sparrow and her crew departed as well.  
  
At Crane’s request, the Alliance cruiser _ Basilisk _ entered orbit over A-117B and took the Pathfinders and the crew of the Sparrow aboard. That was how Aabha and the Pathfinders’ missing research assistant came to be standing on the Basilisk’s observation deck as it began the orbital bombardment and laid the frontier planet's twisted legacy to rest.  
  
They stood together before the plasteel viewport, watching the thick white bolts of the Basilisk’s gun batteries come raining down. Aabha studied the girl beside her, reflected in the window. A short, plump Filipino woman with tawny skin, a mop of dark curls, and the same cats’-eye glasses she’d worn since she was fourteen.  
  
Amalia Fides. Aabha’s childhood sweetheart and phantom from her past. As far as ghosts went, she was friendlier than most.  
  
“I can’t believe you’ve worn the same glasses for over a decade,” Aabha teased.  
  
“My prescription hasn’t _ changed _ in over a decade,” Amalia laughed.  
  
Aabha laughed, but it faded too soon. She looked at Amalia sidelong. “...You, um. You look great, you know.”  
  
Amalia reflexively touched the left side of her face. “Oh, well, the grafts have had years for any scarring to heal.”  
  
Aabha winced. She reached up and tugged at her braid.  
  
“...I never blamed you, you know,” Amalia said quietly, only able to speak to Aabha’s reflection. “Although I’m sure you went ahead and blamed yourself enough for both of us.”  
  
“Lia…” Aabha warned.  
  
“Don’t you give me that,” Amalia chided. “Listen to me, Aabha. Let it go. Let the dead be dead. We’re not who we were back then, and that’s not a bad thing. I mean, look at you! A full-fledged Order operative with your own team, your own ship--”  
  
Aabha coughed. “Well. I don’t own the ship.”  
  
“Not yet,” Amalia teased. “I’m proud of you, Aabha. But also sad. It’s strange. You grew up, and I wasn’t there for any of it.”  
  
“Yeah…” Aabha exhaled. “...you’re not the first person to say that.”  
  
Amalia nodded. “Have you… _ talked _ to--”  
  
“I thought you said to let the dead be dead,” Aabha said dryly.  
  
“I’m not asking you to make up with your bitch of a mother,” Amalia huffed, a hand on her hip. “But he’s… y’know…”  
  
“My dad?” Aabha asked wearily.  
  
“He’s a decent boss, at least,” Amalia shrugged.  
  
Aabha sighed. “...I’ll call him.”  
  
“You could talk to him right now, while we’re all on this ship.”  
  
“I’ll _ call _ him,” Aabha insisted.  
  
“Have it your way,” Amalia chuckled. “So. What happens now?”  
  
“After what happened down there, I imagine Order Intelligence will want to debrief you,” Aabha said. “After that… I guess we both go right back to work.”  
  
“It’s a shame,” Amalia said, leaning on the rail and resting her chin in her hands.  
  
“I know,” Aabha smiled sadly. “I just found you. And now I’m losing you again.”  
  
Amalia snorted and slapped Aabha in the arm. “You make it sound like I’m dead! Such a drama queen. Just _ call _ me.”  
  
Aabha tugged at her braid, sheepish. “I, ah… lost… your comm frequency.”  
  
Amalia scoffed. She scrawled it out on a slip of paper, and pushed it into Aabha’s hands. Then she pulled Aabha close and gave her a hug.  
  
Aabha sank into the embrace, tucking Amalia’s head under her chin. She was so warm.  
  
“I should let you go,” Amalia tittered as they broke apart. “Your friends over there have been giving me the sassy side eye for awhile now. Kit and Lily, right? They seem fun.”  
  
“...Yeah,” Aabha fidgeted. “We’re, um… we’re dating.”  
  
“All three of you?” Amalia blinked. She chortled. “Oho! Now _ that’s _ a story I need to hear. Maybe we can get dinner sometime, and catch up properly, what do you say?”  
  
Aabha blinked. “Uh. ...Does it have to be shipboard food?”  
  
Amalia waved the thought away. “Who do you think you’re talking to? _ I’ll _ cook. Bring your girlfriends, they seem like a lot of fun. The short one is a fantastic hugger.”  
  
“That’s Kit,” Aabha laughed. “She’ll hate that you called her the short one.”  
  
Amalia beamed. “It was really good seeing you again, _ mahal ko _ .”  
  
_ My love. _ Aabha found herself blushing like she was in high school again.  
  
“It’s so easy to tease you,” Amalia thumped her arm, chuckling. “Don’t be a stranger, now.”  
  
“I won’t,” Aabha smiled. “Take care.”  
  
Amalia waved and crossed the concourse, waving to Kit and Lily as well. Aabha walked up to join them, and was immediately greeted by a chorus of “oooooooh”s.  
  
“Shut up,” Aabha said flatly.  
  
“Excuse me, Agents?”  
  
Aabha stiffened, and turned towards the window. Anand approached them, wringing his hands. Kit and Lily met him halfway, so Aabha could keep her distance.  
  
Anand cleared his throat. “Agents. I wanted to… I wanted to thank you all for rescuing my assistent, Miss Fides, of course, but I-- I also wanted to thank you two, especially.”  
  
Anand glanced over the girls’ shoulders to Aabha’s back, and exhaled, lowering his voice.  
  
“From what I can gather, you two have become Aabha’s left and right hands. I want to thank you for taking such good care of her. I couldn’t be there for her when she needed me most. But I’m glad she has you.”  
  
Kit and Lily shared a look, and nodded, sober. Anand looked past them, to Aabha.  
  
“Take care,” he called. “Agent Puri.”  
  
Silence. Anand cleared his throat, and turned away.  
  
“Take care, Dad,” Aabha murmured.  
  
Anand paused, for a moment. He joined Amalia, and kept on walking. Amalia waved, mouthing “call me!” as they disappeared down the hall.  
  
Aabha blew out a melancholy sigh as Kit and Lily sidled up beside her. Kit grinned, punching Aabha in the arm.  
  
“Your ex from 10 years ago really gave you her comm frequency, huh?” Kit teased.  
  
“I _ lost _ it, alright?” Aabha huffed.  
  
“Everybody loves Aabha,” Lily teased. “She can’t help it.”  
  
“Yeah, who could blame her?”  
  
Aabha smiled, leaning back against the balcony rail. She took the little slip of meticulously folded paper Amalia had given her, and unfurled it.  
  
“Ask your dad! :)” Amalia had written.  
  
“Oh, Lia…” Aabha shook her head, and sighed.  
  
~*~  
  
The priestess emerged from A-117B’s fetid swamp, materializing from the water like a ghost. She dragged herself out of the water and lay on the riverbank, breathing hard. Her eyes stung, but she didn’t know why. She waited until her hands stopped shaking, and pulled herself to her feet.  
  
A colossal blast, louder than any thunder, split the sky open and threw her face down in the mud. She rose, gasping, eyes snapping towards the waterfall in the distance. A pillar of smoke was rising from the cliffs above.  
  
A lance of acid-white light pierced the clouds and skewered the cliffs. Then another, and another. She watched, speechless, as her Mother’s temple vanished in a dozen pillars of annihilation. The last blast, lucky number thirteen, shivered the countryside and sent a shockwave of filthy green light rocketing across the trees. She felt it, then. An entire city. An entire world, gone.  
  
“Alone,” she whispered, with hollow eyes.  
  
“Alone,” she said, as she hugged her knees to her chest and began to cry.  
  
The shadows flickered strangely around her. There was a rustling in the reeds beside her. Instantly, she was up and alert, arm blades extended, hissing a threat to whatever thought it could sneak up on her.  
  
A pair of wolf-like shadow beasts muzzled through the undergrowth, staring her down with their eyeless faces. But then a man stepped between them. He placed a hand on the creatures’ heads, and they vanished into smoke, leaving only a thin cloud of chalk dust.  
  
“Such a shame, isn’t it?” he said, clapping chalk dust from his hands. “They destroy what they don’t understand.”  
  
She didn’t have the strength to fight any more. She retracted her arm blades, sitting on the riverbank, weighed down by grief.  
  
“...Yes,” she said. “I failed my Mother. Now I am no one. I have nowhere. I have nothing.”  
  
“Oh,” the man smiled, “I wouldn’t say that. What’s your name, child?”  
  
The priestess sniffled. “...Nyx.”  
  
“That’s your Mother’s name, yes,” he said. “I asked for yours.”  
  
“‘ _ I am Despair, and all those who despair are me _ ,’” she recited. “We are all Nyx.”  
  
The man chuckled to himself. He leaned on a cane of engraved serpents with eyes that shone like sickly green stars.  
  
“Well, then, little Nyx,” Maxwell smiled, “you can just call me ‘Professor’.”  
  
~*~


End file.
